The official Why We Serve web page depicts a smiling soldier with an Iraqi child enjoying a lollipop, and tells readers that:
By hosting uniformed service members to speak about their individual experiences in the Long War, audiences around the country are offered a personal view on military service.
The Why We Serve speakers do not address issues of Department of Defense policy (emphasis added). Rather, each member relates his or her own experience in a manner that offers Americans a glimpse of military service as can only be seen through the eyes of our uniformed men and women.
I wrote back to Major Devine expressing skepticism about this program. It seemed to me that it was intended
to substitute an allegedly 'non-political' meet and greet with the troops for a direct and explicitly political discussion of the issues. I think the effect of de-politicizing and personalizing the discussion in this way is to immunize US policy from criticism while fostering warm fuzzy feelings about the US military as represented by individually admirable service members.
Major Devine responded assuring me that this was not a domestic propaganda campaign:
...let me assure you that although we at the DoD view this program as a community outreach tool, we offer these returning vets to the general public without any stump-speech or overall communication agenda. All we ask of them is that they try their best to effectively communicate why they have decided to volunteer to wear the uniform of their country in a time of conflict.
...The reason I am reaching out to colleges/universities is directly related to what you mention —free thinking, open dialogue, learning, and shared experience. This is not a “pro-war” or “pro-administration” program intended to “win the hearts and minds,” nor is it a recruiting campaign. I merely want to offer people another resource in order to make more informed opinions...
This did not reassure me, since my point was that this program appears to want to substitute one kind of discussion (personalized, non-political) for another (explicitly political policy-oriented dialogue).
As I looked into this further I found an article from the American Forces Press Service entitled "Outreach Program Puts Human Face on Military Service" in which Major Devine described the Why We Serve program in the following, more directly political, terms:
"What this program is doing is helping us win the ‘war on narratives,’ especially in the mainstream media,” Devine noted. The program, he added, offers a different perspective about the war on terrorism, from the viewpoints of military members who’ve served in Afghanistan, Iraq or the Horn of Africa.
Similarly, an Army officer who is one of the programs hand-picked speakers explained:
Meeting one-on-one with the American public helps to combat misperceptions about the U.S. effort in Iraq, he said. “It’s a new fight. It’s a very, very powerful information war...”
So it appears that when the program is discussed within the Defense establishment (the AFPS article) they are more willing to link it clearly to the overall war effort, part of the "war on narratives" or "information war"; but when they contact university professors and ask to be invited to speak to students, they present the program as apolitical, just one more source of information.
I am catching some shit for declining this invitation. Some see my "thanks, but no thanks" as left-wing academic intolerance of establishment or conservative voices. They want to interpret this as a free speech issue. I think that's lame. This is clearly a domestic propaganda operation, and as the statements above reveal, the military personnel in charge of the program view it as such (‘war on narratives,’'information war,' etc.). But that's not what was decisive in my mind. The clincher for me was that they are presenting this in the guise of a personal interaction with "recently returned warriors" rather than as an honestly and directly political dialogue about US military policy. That seems to me to be disingenuous, and I feel no obligation to deliver up students to a such a "bait and switch" operation.
